Assessment for government programs

In my field of higher education, the big idea is assessment. Accreditors are requiring that we assess what we do; that is, that we give evidence for the quality and effectiveness of our programs and operations. Businesses too are measuring product quality and customer satisfaction. But there is almost no assessment of government programs. Very little data is gathered to determine whether or not a program works or fulfills its purpose. As a result, once a program is enacted, it is almost impossible to kill. But now some economists are proposing ways to bring assessment to the government.

From Jim Tankersley and Dylan Matthewsin the Washington Post:

At a time when the federal budget is increasingly squeezed — and lawmakers are wrestling with tough choices on what to cut or to keep — the government does very, very little to find out which programs produce the best results for the money spent on them.

There are several reasons for that, most wrapped up in politics. There’s no natural ideological constituency for program evaluations. Lawmakers who champion social programs often fear that attempts to measure them will be only thinly disguised excuses to kill the programs. Fiscal hawks don’t often love the idea of spending more money on evaluations.

But if Washington ever hopes to provide the services voters say they want, at the tax rates voters say they’re willing to pay, economists say the government will need to ramp up its efforts to figure out which programs work and which ones don’t, and shift resources accordingly.

“It’s pretty much a blanket statement that we throw money at lots of things and never really study what we’re getting for that money, and that’s a shame,” said Peter Orszag, who was President Obama’s first budget director.

That’s especially bad at a time when Washington is debating tax increases and spending cuts to reduce the federal deficit, said Jeffrey Liebman, a Harvard economist and also a former Obama budget official. “It’s imperative to be able to show that the things [voters’] tax dollars are being spent on work, and that we’re trying to improve performance and do it in a data-driven way,” Liebman said. “That’s just good stewardship.”

A small but growing group of researchers and lawmakers is pushing to inject more measurement into the budget debate, Orszag and Liebman among them. On Wednesday, Liebman will unveil a paper at a conference sponsored by the Hamilton Project, an economics-focused program at the Brookings Institution, and Results for America, a relatively new effort that advocates for more evidence-based funding decisions in government; in it, he will call for a major increase in government efforts to improve the value of its spending programs.

I am a retired English professor and college administrator. I have written over 20 books on different facets of Christianity & Culture.

tODD

Pretty sure “stewardship” isn’t confined solely to theology.

It is when we think of the things we have as belonging to our Lord, and ourselves merely as caretakers. But in this example, the stewardship is the government’s using money that belongs to the people.

Steve Bauer

The Department of Federal Program Evaluation. Like this won’t be a funhouse for partisan shenanigans.

http://www.bikebubba.blogspot.com bike bubba

Part of me wants to say “it’s about time!”, and part of me wants to point out that the failures of government programs is not so subtle that you need a stable of trained statisticians to point it out.

For example, only 40% of Pell Grant recipients ever graduate. Maybe it’s time to change the qualifying standards, but Hell will break loose if you refuse to fund kids because they have little chance of ever graduating, no? In the same way, about half of the recipients of President Obama’s loans and grants for alternative energy have gone bankrupt. Will the group demand a change in qualifying standards?

Given that we’re talking about serious money in kickbacks to supporters, count me pessimistic.

DonS

We finally repealed the telephone tax to fund the Spanish-American War a few years ago.

Once you add a government program, you create stakeholders. Stakeholders include government employees to administer the program and program beneficiaries. Those beneficiaries include eligible benefits recipients and contractors and others who benefit in one way or another from serving the program. This is why government programs are virtually never repealable, no matter how abominable their misuse of hard-earned taxpayer dollars. Stakeholders fight tooth and nail to protect the program, and there is no counter-advocate on the other side, lobbying for its repeal.

The only way I can think of to possibly counter this trend would be to require a sunset provision for every implemented program, with that sunset provision requiring a supermajority vote to be overridden. Maybe that would work. It’s certainly a good idea, and should be attached by rule to every piece of legislation establishing or continuing a government benefits program.